E-Books

J. J. Barry - 516 pages - EBOOK - PDF, Kindle, & EPUB

Christopher Columbus is one of the most saintly and heroic Catholic laymen in the annals of our glorious history, whose true life-story should be known by all Catholics, but especially by Catholic Americans who owe so much to him.
It is very important for Catholics to have a sense of gratitude, and to express it. Columbus Day is still, in this age of secularism and hatred of the Faith, a civil holiday; one that should be celebrated with great reverence, especially by Catholic Americans.
The true story of his life and the glories of his achievement (indeed all of the achievements of that great Catholic nation called Spain), have been under attack for a long time now by the Christ-haters, some of whom even pretend that it might be true that the people of the Americas would have been better off without Columbus’ discoveries and the subsequent events of conquest and evangelization due to his efforts. This book refutes those calumnies.
To recognize and admit that the success of the great voyages of discovery was truly due to the special designs of the providence of God and under His direct protection, was the first impulse of the heart of Columbus. His life of faith and devotion is truly inspirational.
The miraculous nature of Columbus’ life and work is the subject of this extensive biography. Here you will discover the hidden reasons and plans that propelled him on his voyage of discovery, and how God ultimately frustrated some of those plans and made others fruitful.

Very few published works require such a lengthy explanation of exactly WHICH edition is being offered, in what format, and why, than Fr. Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints. The reason is that there are so many very different books being printed under this author’s name and under this title due to it’s long history (the work is almost 300 years old) and its universal popularity. Few catholic books except the Bible, the Confessions, the Imitation, and the Summa, are as widely read. This book has also been extensively revised, altered, and updated since its original publication, with new editions, even 21st century revisions being made, that we feel the time is ripe for an original, unexpurgated, and unrevised print version to be made available.
This edition is widely considered to be the most complete and authoritative ever issued. It is the 1854 edition of D. J. Sadlier of New York, and in the Preface it gives its “pedigree.” The original was printed anonymously in London in 1759, after 30 years work on the project. The edition published by Sadlier is an exact replica of the Dublin and London edition of 1833. Being a scholarly work, but also a work deeply imbued with the piety and devotion of a priest’s lifetime effort, it is loaded with footnotes which comprise a significant proportion of the total text. In the original book, the footnotes were printed in such a small, closely-set typeface, that they were almost unreadable.
Loreto Publications has utilized the recent development of OCR scanning to extract the original text and to put it into a modern, highly readable, and much larger font typeface than any of the old editions. We have extensively proofread the text thus generated, and have made the layout “user friendly” as the moderns so succinctly state. In addition, our already available edition of Butler’s Little Pictorial Lives—which is a drastic abridgment of this original edition to one volume, illustrated, with one saint and one image for each day of the year—has provided us with 365 beautiful 19th century engravings which we have added to this original un-illustrated text.
Loreto has made a few corrections of obvious typographical errors and has slightly altered some capitalization rubrics and some spellings, but we have has refrained from alterations to the text. We think that modern readers are not so uneducated as to need the work “updated” for them, either as to content or style, since the beautiful expressiveness of Butler’s 18th century grammatical and rhetorical mastery is not so far removed historically as to render it unintelligible to any ordinary 21st century reader. We are certain that our readers will appreciate the original work for its piety, beauty, and comprehensive scholarship.

A great man once said that “History is the laboratory of Wisdom.” And where do we find the best history? It is found in the lives of the saints, for it is through their lives on earth, lived within the union of Christ’s mystical body, the Catholic Church, that we see the only history that truly matters for all eternity.

This spectacular history by Fr. Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints, presents to the reader the life story of over 1600 saints and their times. In the original introduction we find this bold statement:

“It is on this account we have ventured to designate The Lives of the Saints an historical supplement to the
Old and New Testaments. We think this work deserves to be so considered, on account of the close resemblance it bears to the historical portions of holy writ. Let the divine economy, in this respect, be for a moment the subject of
the reader’s consideration.”
Loreto Publications has here reproduced the finest original edition of the text from the early 19th century with no modernization, alterations, deletions, or additions to the product of Father Butler.

Father Alban Butler was born in 1710, at Appletree, Northamptonshire, the second son of Simon Butler, Esq. Orphaned at the age of eight, he was sent to be educated at the English College, Douay, in France. In 1735, Butler was ordained a priest. At Douay, he was appointed professor of philosophy, and later professor of theology. It was at Douay, he began his principal work The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints. He also prepared material for Richard Challoner’s Memoirs of Missionary Priests, a work on the martyrs of the reign of Elizabeth. He labored for some time as a missionary priest in Staffordshire, and was finally appointed president of the English seminary at Saint Omer in France, where he remained till his death in 1773.

Fr. Clement Raab, OFM - 136 pages EBOOK - PDF, Kindle, & EPUB

The Church is essetiay coservative. Her conservatism is not merely a measure of prudence and good judgment; it is an intrinsic necessity. No matter what she may consider, decide, or undertake, she always harks back to the beginning.
After twenty [one] centuries the “pillar and ground of truth” has not moved a whit from her primitive position, while all other human foundations have either crumbled to dust or have been driven headlong by the maelstrom of this fast changing world. To these, the ideal looms hazily in the distant future; to the Church, it stands firmly in the distant past. The closer she aligns herself with Christ, the surer she is of ultimate success and victory, being “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone”
(Eph. II:20).
The present volume is designed to serve as a ready survey and reference book on the history of the councils. It is to serve as an aid, primarily to the cleric or lay student who has neither the time nor the opportunity to delve into, and analyze sources and controversies, but who is satisfied to learn the outstanding facts and findings concerning which Church historians generally agree. This brief and positive sketch of the twenty great events in history, so vibrant with life and so far-reaching in their consequences, will afford him, we trust, a very definite and appreciable knowledge of the nature and history of Holy Mother Church.
Originally published in 1937, this re-issue of Fr. Raab’s classic work on the history of the Ecumenical Councils did not include anything about Vatican II, because its convocation still lay in the future. We have not added to his work since so much has already been written of the newest Council elsewhere.

Fr. Walter Farrell, O. P. -ebook (epub, mobi, pdf) 412 pages

Volume Two
There is a need felt by those who, having heard enough of St. Thomas to whet their appetite, suddenly discover that they cannot go directly to St. Thomas without the guidance of a professor; and for most of them the leisure days of the classroom are over forever.
This, then, is the double purpose of this book: to furnish a rational defense of his faith for the ordinary Catholic and to open St. Thomas to the layman who has no professional philosophical or theological knowledge. It is not, then, intended only for the very learned, nor for a textbook. If it must be described in a phrase, it might best be called an easy guidebook to St. Thomas’s greatest work.
Just as a guidebook to Paris can be best evaluated in the streets of Paris, so this guide book to the Summa can be best appreciated in the pages of the Summa, by comparing the individual chapters of the book with the corresponding questions of the Prima Secundae (First Part of the Second Part) of St. Thomas’ Summa, questions that are given at the head of each chapter. Any particularly striking point will be found more fully and more beautifully developed in the Summa itself; further proofs, explanations, and illustrations can all be had directly from St. Thomas.
It is important to remember that it is the Summa reduced to popular language and not merely another book about St. Thomas or about the Summa. In fact, it is often more than that, for, particularly on difficult questions, the parallel passages in other works of St. Thomas have been freely used where the conciseness of the Summa might have caused some obscurity for one not wholly familiar with the thought of Thomas.

Father Farrell’s four-part Companion to the Summa has been responsible for much of the renewed interest in Thomism in the United States. It is required reading for many Catholic college students and “unrequired reading” for thousands of other lovers of St. Thomas.
Its author was born in Chicago in 1902. He attended Dominican schools and was ordained in the Dominican order in 1927, then going to the University of Fribourg for his S.T.D. degree. In 1940 he was awarded the seldom given Dominican honor of the Master of Sacred Theology degree. He served as a Navy chaplain during World War II and was then stationed at the Dominican Houses of Studies in Washington, D. C. and River Forest, Illinois until his death in 1951.

Father Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp. - Small book - 100 pages - EBOOK - PDF, Kindle, & EPUB

I repeatedly promised Saint Peter that if I ever got the chance, I would teach the truth about his Master in the way he and his successors, the Roman Pontiffs, wanted it done. That is what I have striven to do and am doing.”   
    — Fr. Denis Fahey

Fr. Fahey’s life work was the promotion of the Catholic social doctrine of Christ the King. He firmly believed that “the world must conform to Our Divine Lord, not He to it.” He always defended the Mystical Body of Christ without compromise. He called the social doctrine “Our Lord’s Program for Order.”

This is the second book Father Fahey wrote exposing Communism as it was actually practised in Russia. The first book, The Rulers of Russia was published ten years earlier and was widely appreciated for its exposure of the truth about those who brought about the ‘birth’ of Communism.

“See to it, Venerable Brethren, that the faithful do not allow themselves to be deceived! Communism is intrinsically wrong.”
— Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, on Atheistic Communism

Fourteen Epochal Documents by Pope Leo XIII on the Social Teachings - EBOOK - PDF

Edited and annotated by Fr. Joseph Husslein, S. J. - Cloth Hardcover -300 Pages

Few American Catholics truly understand t he social teachings of the Catholic Church. This may be in part due to the fact that many of he best papal teachings on this subject have either been ignored or  not widely read by Americans. Father Husslein tried very hard to remedy this situation with the publication of two books in 1940 dedicated to solving  this problem. He gathered together all of the encylicals by the two popes who wrote most on  the topic and made certain that the english translations were well organized, accurate, and easily understandable and readable in translation. He also made many notes that are helpful to the reader. The service he performed is treausred by all students of the Church's social doctrine and these two books, so long out of print, are now available agai exactly as they were originally published.

If you have not read many of the encyclicals that were published before the modernization of encyclical writing that took place after the 2nd Vatican Council you are in for a real treat! The brevity, clarity, and chastity of the language will surprise you. Leo is no phenomenological exegete. He speaks the way one would expect the Vicar of Christ to speak, in clear, unambiguous, and manly language that is full of charity and pius unction and truth. No one who reads these most important social encylicals will come away confused. Be warned however, their brevity is deceptive. They are overflowing with profound insights and exhortations, therefore, small doses properly savored and meditated upon is the best way to imbibe the true wisdom and sound doctrine found here.

Fr. Walter Farrell, O. P. - Ebook (epub, mobi, pdf) 408 pages

This magnificent set of four books is an exposition and guide to the entire Summa of Saint Thomas Aquinas. It was written by one of the premier Dominican Thomistic scholars who were active in the scholastic revival of the 1930s and 40s. These books contain the entire Summa transposed into modern English prose, thereby making accessible, for those who are not trained philosophers, the complete theology of Saint Thomas’s Summa.
The composition of these four books matches up perfectly with each of the 614 questions of the Summa. This book is meant to be read alongside the actual Summa in order to make it more easily understood by the average reader.
Volume One
This volume attempts to put in popular form St. Thomas’ masterly study of God, man, and the world in the Prima Pars of his Summa Theologica. His study is of extreme pertinence to our times precisely because we are the victims of a constantly increasing intellectual confusion. We have become more and more timid about digging beneath the surface of life, more and more emphatic about a knowledge of facts, less and less concerned with the wisdom of beginnings and ends. To put it baldly, we have concentrated more and more on the physical world and less and less on man and on God. The fact is, however, that exclusive concentration on a study of the world does not unearth the important truths about the world; an exclusive consideration of man and the world results in a blurred, distorted vision of both. We have tried to know only the world and remained most ignorant of it; to know only man and the world and have become entangled in a mass of meaningless detail. For the world is intelligible only in terms of man and God; man is intelligible only in terms of God; God is intelligible only in terms of Himself.

The Golden Chain Of St. Thomas Aquinas - CATHOLIC EDITION - Ebook (pdf, kindle, epub) 

Volume III: Commentary on St. John

There has never been a Catholic version of the Catena Aurea published in English until now. Using in-line citations, Douay-Rheims biblical texts, modern easy-to-read fonts, and supplying updated (including on-line source) references to original documents, Loreto has produced the first Catholic edition of the invaluable commentaries of the Fathers and Doctors collected by Saint Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century.

We have been working on this project sporadically as time permitted us for several years. This edition far surpasses all of the protestant versions available from other Catholic publishers.

Fr. Walter Farrell, O. P. -ebook (epub, mobi, pdf) 430 pages

Volume Four
St. Thomas died too soon to finish his book, the Summa Theologica. Not all authors are so fortunate. This book marks the completion of a series, projected long ago perhaps with an eye to Thomas’ good fortune. The first was a search for the ultimate answers that form the bedrock of human life, human action, and the living of human life; the second furnished the key to human life and human action; the third concentrated on the living of human life in all its exuberant fullness; this, the fourth, traces the royal road a man’s feet must walk and the goals that await him at the end of the journey.
It was the Son of God Who declared. “I am the way”; this book takes His words literally, as they were meant to be taken. Its subject matter, then, is the sublime mystery by which the Son of God became man to lead men to God, the mystery of the Incarnation. It does not stop at an examination of the mystery but goes on to trace all the consequences of God’s dwelling among men: the life of Christ, detail by detail; His blessed mother; the continuation of His life in the sacraments; and the goal of heaven which is at the end of the royal road, the goal of hell which is the terminal of any other path. From beginning to end, this book deals with the supernatural, and that without apology, excuse, or defense; all this has been taken care of in previous volumes. Its contents are thus not so much an argued thesis as a divinely stated fact. If a modern reader is avid of facts, he will find a sublime diet of divine facts here; if, however, he is fastidious in the matter of facts, particularly supernatural facts, this diet may well prove too much for him.
It was not, however, for the fastidious, but for those who were hungry for God that these books were written. If they do something to stave off starvation from those who have the courage to admit their hunger, Thomas may be pardoned for not having seen to it that they were not finished, and I may be forgiven for the effrontery that began them.
Again, I wish to express my gratitude to Thomas for the good things in these books, and to my critics that the bad things are not worse.

The Golden Chain Of St. Thomas Aquinas - CATHOLIC EDITION- Ebook (kindle, epub, pdf) 

Volume II: Commentary on St. Mark and St. Luke 

There has never been a Catholic version of the Catena Aurea published in English until now. Using in-line citations, Douay-Rheims biblical texts, modern easy-to-read fonts, and supplying updated (including on-line source) references to original documents, Loreto has produced the first Catholic edition of the invaluable commentaries of the Fathers and Doctors collected by Saint Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century.

We have been working on this project sporadically as time permitted us for several years. This edition far surpasses all of the protestant versions available from other Catholic publishers.

Eighteen Enclicals of Social Reconstruction by Pope Pius XI - EBOOK - PDF

Edited and annotated by Fr. Joseph Husslein, S. J. - 450 Pages

Few American Catholics truly understand t he social teachings of the Catholic Church. This may be in part due to the fact that many of he best papal teachings on this subject have either been ignored or  not widely read by Americans. Father Husslein tried very hard to remedy this situation with the publication of two books in 1940 dedicated to solving  this problem. He gathered together all of the encylicals by the two popes who wrote most on  the topic and made certain that the english translations were well organized, accurate, and easily understandable and readable in translation. He also made many notes that are helpful to the reader. The service he performed is treausred by all students of the Church's social doctrine and these two books, so long out of print, are now available agai exactly as they were originally published.

If you have not read many of the encyclicals that were published before the modernization of encyclical writing that took place after the 2nd Vatican Council you are in for a real treat! The brevity, clarity, and chastity of the language will surprise you. Leo is no phenomenological exegete. He speaks the way one would expect the Vicar of Christ to speak, in clear, unambiguous, and manly language that is full of charity and pius unction and truth. No one who reads these most important social encylicals will come away confused. Be warned however, their brevity is deceptive. They are overflowing with profound insights and exhortations, therefore, small doses properly savored and meditated upon is the best way to imbibe the true wisdom and sound doctrine found here.

25 Essays by Robert D. Hickson - 640 pages - EBOOK - PDF, Kindle, & EPUB

Archbishop Vigano's Preface

Memory is a fundamental element of a people’s identity, civilization and
culture: a society without memory, whose patrimony consists solely of a
present without a past, is condemned to have no future. It is alarming that
this loss of collective memory affects not only Christian nations, but also
seriously afflicts the Catholic Church herself and, consequently, Catholics.
This amnesia affects all social classes and is not the result of chance, but of
systematic work on the part of those who, as enemies of the True, Good
and Beautiful, must erase any ray of these divine attributes from even the
most marginal aspects of social life, from our idioms, from memories of
our childhood and from the stories of our grandparents. The Orwellian
action of artificially remodeling the past has become commonplace in the
contemporary world, to the point that a class of high school students
are unable to recognize an altarpiece depicting a scene from the life of
Christ or a bas-relief with one of the most revered saints of the past. Dr.
Robert Hickson calls this inability “deficiency of dogmatic understanding”,
“Catholic illiteracy of pestilential proportions”.
Tabula rasa: millions of souls who only twenty or thirty years ago would
have immediately identified the Baptism of the Lord in the Jordan or
Saint Jerome or Saint Mary Magdalene are capable of seeing only two men
along a river, an old man with a lion and a woman with a vase. Reading
the pages of Dante, Manzoni or one of the great Christian writers of the
past, many Catholics can no longer grasp the moral and transcendent
sense of a culture that is no longer their common heritage, a jealously
guarded legacy, the deep root of a robust plant full of fruit.
In its place we have a bundle of the confused rubbish of the myths of the
Revolution, the dusty Masonic ideological repertoire, and the iconography
of a supposed freedom won by the guillotine, along with the persecution
of the Church, the martyrdom of Catholics in Mexico and Spain, the
end of the tyranny of Kings and Popes and the triumph of bankers and
viii Gratitude, Contemplation, and the Worth of Catholic Literature
usurers. A lineage of kings, saints, and heroes is ignored by its heirs, who
stoop to boasting about their ancestors who were criminals, usurpers,
and seditious traitors: never has falsification reached the point of such
incomprehensible perversion, and it is evident that the desire to artificially
create such ancestry is the necessary premise for the barbarization of the
offspring, which is now practically accomplished.
We must also recognize that this removal has found significant
encouragement also among those who, within the Catholic Church,
have erased two thousand years of the inestimable patrimony of faith,
spirituality and art, beginning with a wretched sense of inferiority instilled
in the faithful even by the Hierarchy since Vatican II. The ancient apostolic
liturgy, on which centuries of poetic compositions, mosaics, frescoes,
paintings, sculptures, chiseled vases, illuminated chorales, embroidered
vestments, plainchants and polyphony have been shaped, has been
proscribed. In its place we now have a squalid rite without roots, born
from the pen of conspirators dipped in the inkwell of Protestantism; music
that is no longer sacred but profane; tasteless liturgical vestments and
sacred vessels made of common material. And as a grey counterpoint to
the hymns of St. Ambrose and St. Thomas, we now have poor paraphrases
without metrics and without soul, grotesque paintings and disturbing
sculptures. The removal of the admirable writings of the Fathers of the
Church, the works of the mystics, the erudite dissertations of theologians
and philosophers and, in the final analysis, of Sacred Scripture itself –
whose divine inspiration is sometimes denied, sacrilegiously affirming
that it is merely of human origin – have all constituted necessary steps
of being able to boast of the credit of worldly novelties, which before
those monuments of human ingenuity enlightened by Grace appear as
miserable forgeries.
This absence of beauty is the necessary counterpart to an absence of
holiness, for where the Lord of all things is forgotten and banished, not
even the appearance of Beauty survives. It is not only Beauty that has
been banished: Catholic Truth has been banished along with it, in all its
crystalline splendor, in all its dazzling consistency, in all its irrepressible
capacity to permeate every sphere of civilized living. Because the Truth
is eternal, immutable and divisive: it existed yesterday, it exists today
and it will exist tomorrow, as eternal and immutable and divisive as the
Word of God.
Certainly, behind this induced amnesia, there is a Trinitarian heresy. And
where the Deceiver lurks, the eternal Truth of God must be obscured in
order to make room for the lie, the betrayal of reality, the denial of the past.
In a forgery that is truly criminal forgery, even the very custodians of the
depositum fidei ask forgiveness from the world for sins never committed by
our fathers – in the name of God, Religion or the Fatherland – supporting
the widest and most articulated historical forgery carried out by the
enemies of God. And this betrays not only the ignorance of History which
is already culpable, but also culpable bad faith and the malicious will to
deceive the simple ones.
Rediscovering memory, even in literature, is a meritorious and necessary
work for the restoration of Christianity, a restoration that is needed
today more than ever if we want to entrust to our children a legacy to be
preserved and handed down as a tangible sign of God’s intervention in
the history of the human race: how much Providence has accomplished
over the centuries – and that art has immortalized by depicting miracles,
the victories of the Christians over the Turk, sovereigns kneeling at the
feet of the Virgin, patron saints of famous universities and prosperous
corporations – can be renewed today and especially tomorrow, only if we
can rediscover our past and understand it in the light of the mystery of
the Redemption.
This book proposes the noble purpose of restoring Catholic memory,
bringing it back to its ancient splendor, that is, the substance of a
harmonious and organic past that has grown and still lives today, just as
the hereditary traits of a child are found developed in the adult man, or
as the vital principle of the seed is found in the sap of the tree and in the
pulp of the fruit. Robert Hickson rightly shows us, in the restoration of
memory, the way to rediscover the shared faith that shapes the traits of a
shared Catholic culture.
In this sense it is significant – I would say extremely appropriate, even if
only by analogy – to have also included Christian literature among the
Sacramentals, applying to it the same action as that of blessed water, the
glow of the candles, the ringing of bells, the liturgical chant: the invocation
of the Virgin in the thirty-third canto of Dante’s Paradiso, the dialogue
of Cardinal Borromeo with the Innominato, and a passage by Chesterton
all make Catholic truths present in our minds and, in some way, they
realize what they mean and can influence the spiritual life, expanding
and completing it. Because of this mystery of God’s unfathomable mercy
we are touched in our souls, moved to tears, inspired by Good, spurred
to conversion. But this is also what happens when we contemplate an
altarpiece or listen to a composition of sacred music, in which a ray of
divine perfection bursts into the greyness of everyday life and shows us the
splendor of the Kingdom that awaits us.
The author writes: “We are called to the commitment to recover the life and
full memory of the Body of Christ, even if in our eyes we cannot do much to
rebuild that Body”. But the Lord does not ask us to perform miracles: He
invites us to make them possible, to create the conditions in our souls and
in our social bodies so that the wonders of divine omnipotence may be
manifested. To open ourselves to the past, to the memory of God’s great
actions in history, is an essential condition for making it possible for us to
become aware of our identity and our destiny today so that we may restore
the Kingdom of Christ tomorrow.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò
Titular Archbishop of Ulpiana
Apostolic Nuncio
28 August 2020
Saint Augustine
Bishop, Confessor, and Doctor of the Church

Fr. Walter Farrell, O. P. - ebook (epub, mobi, pdf) 464 pages

Volume Three
Originally, Fr. Farrell published Vol. Two and Vol. Three before Volumes One and Four.
Chesterton, in his Saint Thomas Aquinas, has explained both my order of publication and the title of this volume. “He (Thomas) did, with a most solid and colossal conviction, believe in Life; and in something like what Stevenson called the great theorem of the livableness of life.… The medievals had put many restrictions, and some excessive restrictions, upon the universal human hunger and even fury for life.... Never until modern thought began, did they really have to fight with men who desired to die. That horror had threatened them in Asiatic Albigensianism, but it never became normal to them—until now.” The whole second part of the Summa, covered by Vols. two and three, deals precisely with the living of human life, the invaluable meaning of that life, and the secrets of the fullest success in the living of it. This part was published first, had to be published first, because of that unholy, perverted eagerness of modern men to throw away their lives and to discard their humanity. This is St. Thomas’ superb defense of the humanity of man. The remaining volumes of this work plumb the depths and scale the heights of the unutterable truths, the mysterious beginnings and glorious goals, that interpenetrate that human life with something of divinity, the truths that are the ultimate explanations of its incredible significance.
This is not a book about the Summa, but the Summa itself reduced to popular language; and Thomas is not read in a day or a year, nor can we suffer an introduction to him, shake hands and then dismiss him from our lives. If we make the happy mistake of so much as smiling at him, he moves bag and baggage into our minds, to become an increasingly more delightful intimate as the years move on.

Fr. Leo Kinsella - EBOOK - PDF

Here is a marriage blueprint that every woman can follow. Happy marriages do not just happen, they are made. It takes three parties to make a good marriage; the husband, the wife, and the Lord. This book is concerned with helping the woman to become “the wife desired”–and therefore loved–that every man worth having wishes to find and keep. This book sold over a quarter of a million copies shortly after its publication in 1951, and it was read by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. It is a practical manual. It should be read by every woman considering entering the matrimonial state and also by those women who are already married.
Small Book format - 100 pages - $7.95

By Father Leonard Feeney, S.J. - EBOOK - PDF

To My Mother, from her 'Minstrel Boy'.

So, you do not like poetry. Too many flowers and angels and stars and clouds. And too many adjectives ending in “Y”. Besides, the better the poem the less you can understand it, right? You are an ordinary Joe who prefers more solid food for his mind and you do not really care if the words rhyme anyway. Well, Joe, lighten up! Let your mind get a taste of Father Feeney’s verse. Your whole family will enjoy the new turf. It will warm the heart. In fact, every one of Father’s poems comes with that guarantee.

Night Noises

Angela died today and went to Heaven;
We counted her summers up and they were seven.
But why does that trouble you, unloosened shutter,
That flap at my window in the wind's wild flutter!

Angela's eyes tonight are cold and dim,
Off in the land of song and Seraphim.
But what does that mean to you, O creaking stair,
And mice in the wall that gnaw the plaster there!

Angela's little hands are folded white,
Deep in the meadow, under the starry night.
But why should an ugly gnat keep finely whining
Around the candle-flame beside me shining!

And never again — and never again will she
Come running across the field to welcome me.
But, little sheep-bells, out on the distant hill,
Why, at this hour, do you wake and tinkle still!

And not any more—alas!— and not any more,
Will she climb the stairs and knock at my lonely door.
But, moaning owl in the hayloft overhead,
How did you come to know that she was dead!

Staff Sergeant Eugene DeLalla - EBOOK - PDF, Kindle, & EPUB

88 pages - Small book format

Air power was a key to the American war strategy throughout the Vietnam war. Numerous air bases were constructed throughout Southeast Asia for the use of our Air Forces during the war. The protection of the personnel, planes, and other materiels of war housed at those air bases was essential, and the task fell to the Air Force Security Police. They did their job well and had a hard earned reputation on both sides of the conflict. They were considered “hard nuts to crack”.
This is a fictionalized account of how some of those airbase perimeter defenders kept that reputation during one tough encounter shortly after the famous “Tet” offensive in the winter and early spring of 1968. The Battle for Oscar Six takes place at Tuy Hoa air base in the II Corps theater of the war, but it could have been at any air base, and the men depicted here who fought that skirmish could have been any of the hundreds of thousands of American boys who gave their youth, their blood, and oftentimes their lives in that protracted struggle known as “The Vietnam War."

By John F. McManus - 244 pages PB - EBOOK - PDF, Kindle, & EPUB

This book, written by a prominent and well known Catholic American, is
the product of almost seventy years of close observation and deep study in a
turbulent world of rapid change and degradation of church and society.
Recently, the courageous Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò published an acknowledgment
of the problems discussed in this book in his now world famous Open Letter to
President Trump where he spoke of Freemasonry and the ‘deep church’. Because
that letter appeared as this book was going to press, The Deep Church Revealed
was added to the original title as a fitting description of its content.

The revealing begins with a description of the Enlightenment philosophers
and their anti-Catholic hatred, and the author proceeds from there to detail in
forty-one astonishing chapters the story of how those men and the organizations
they inspired grew and and spread their pernicious doctrines throughout the
world and the Church.

The plans that these Freemasonic organizations laid were remarkably successful,
even though vigorously opposed by every Pope for over 200 years. “An
enemy hath done this” Our Lord said in the parable of the wheat and the cockles.
Truly, this can be said today of the situation in His Church. The holy and
vigilant Padre Pio told Fr. Luigi Villa in 1963 when he assigned Fr. Villa the task
of exposing these enemies “Courage, courage, courage! For the Church is already
invaded by Freemasonry that has already reached the Pope’s slippers.”
We are thankful to Mr. McManus for telling this story briefly, succinctly,
and with unbounded love for our Holy Mother the Church. He advises us,
like Saint Peter, “Be sober and watchful, for your adversary the devil goeth
about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Whom ye should
resist, fortes in fide.”

Volume One: The Church and the World in which the Church was Founded - EBOOK - PDF

Msgr. Philip Hughes - PB - 344 pages

The first volume, then treats of the Church in the West up to the conversion of Constantine (312) but in the East up to Justinian I—or rather a century and a half beyond to allow for the consummation of the disunion that followed Chalcedon.

Volume One: The Church and the World in which the Church was Founded
Volume Two: The Church and the World the Church Created
Volume Three: The Church and the Revolt against it of the Church-created World

Butler's Original Lives of the Saints Vol. 4 - EBOOK - PDF, Kindle, & EPUB

June & July - Hardcover Illustrated - 806 pages

Putting these invaluable books together in a new and modern format has been a joy for us.  Some of the longest treatises are contained in it. The section on St. Ignatius of Loyola is almost a complete biography!

A great man once said that “History is the laboratory of Wisdom.” And where do we find the best history? It is found in the lives of the saints, for it is through their lives on earth, lived within the union of Christ’s mystical body, the Catholic Church, that we see the only history that truly matters for all eternity.

This spectacular history by Fr. Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints, presents to the reader the life story of over 1600 saints and their times. In the original introduction we find this bold statement:

“It is on this account we have ventured to designate The Lives of the Saints an historical supplement to the
Old and New Testaments. We think this work deserves to be so considered, on account of the close resemblance it bears to the historical portions of holy writ. Let the divine economy, in this respect, be for a moment the subject of
the reader’s consideration.”
Loreto Publications has here reproduced the finest original edition of the text from the early 19th century with no modernization, alterations, deletions, or additions to the product of Father Butler.

Father Alban Butler was born in 1710, at Appletree, Northamptonshire, the second son of Simon Butler, Esq. Orphaned at the age of eight, he was sent to be educated at the English College, Douay, in France. In 1735, Butler was ordained a priest. At Douay, he was appointed professor of philosophy, and later professor of theology. It was at Douay, he began his principal work The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints. He also prepared material for Richard Challoner’s Memoirs of Missionary Priests, a work on the martyrs of the reign of Elizabeth. He labored for some time as a missionary priest in Staffordshire, and was finally appointed president of the English seminary at Saint Omer in France, where he remained till his death in 1773.

Butler's Original Lives - Vol. 6 - October & November  - Ebook - 954 pages

Volume 6 of Butler’s Lives covers the months of October and November. Putting these invaluable books together in a new and modern format has been a joy for us. We hope that you are enjoying them. Vol. 6 at 954 pages is the largest. Some of the longest treatises are contained in it and these two months are very rich in the sanctoral cycle and full of famous saints.

A great man once said that “History is the laboratory of Wisdom.” And where do we find the best history? It is found in the lives of the saints, for it is through their lives on earth, lived within the union of Christ’s mystical body, the Catholic Church, that we see the only history that
truly matters for all eternity.

This spectacular history by Fr. Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints, presents to the reader the life story of over 1600 saints and their times. In the original introduction we find this bold statement:

“It is on this account we have ventured to designate The Lives of the Saints an historical supplement to the
Old and New Testaments. We think this work deserves to be so considered, on account of the close resemblance it bears to the historical portions of holy writ. Let the divine economy, in this respect, be for a moment the subject of
the reader’s consideration.”
Loreto Publications has here reproduced the finest original edition of the text from the early 19th century with no modernization, alterations, deletions, or additions to the product of Father Butler.

Father Alban Butler was born in 1710, at Appletree, Northamptonshire, the second son of Simon Butler, Esq. Orphaned at the age of eight, he was sent to be educated at the English College, Douay, in France. In 1735, Butler was ordained a priest. At Douay, he was appointed professor of philosophy, and later professor of theology. It was at Douay, he began his principal work The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints. He also prepared material for Richard Challoner’s Memoirs of Missionary Priests, a work on the martyrs of the reign of Elizabeth. He labored for some time as a missionary priest in Staffordshire, and was finally appointed president of the English seminary at Saint Omer in France, where he remained till his death in 1773.

vitis Sanctorum

ebook - PDF only

680 pages

Loreto Publications is pleased to present almost 100 essays from one of the most fascinating Catholic American essayists of our post Vatican era. Robert Hickson's broad experience and deep personal knowledge of politics, military affairs, literature, and religion in late 20th century America give him a unique perspective and judgement that is thoroughly Catholic and poingnantly expressive. His curriculuum vitae is impressive and his experience as a soldier, college professor, public speaker, husband, father, and traditional Catholic warror are evident in these profound and penetrating writings.

FOREWORD

It is part of the vocation of a small Catholic publisher like Loreto Publications to give voice not only to the accumulated wisdom of past ages, but also to make known the effects of grace in the souls of the men and women whose lives run concurrent with our own, when those effects are worth noting and preserving for future generations. If the effects of supernatural grace manifest themselves in the remarkable written expression of a Catholic warrior, it can be a great benefit for others to read and contemplate the procession of thought produced by
those effects in a man of substantial educational attainments and wide experience. This is why we have chosen to make available this selection of almost 100 essays by our good friend Dr. Robert Hickson.
One of the requirements for the acquisition and growth of virtue that nature and grace impose upon a man is that he make a serious attempt to impose order in this world of disorder. First he must order his own thoughts and passions, and then he may seek to promote order in his own sphere of influence in the world. This is the work of a Christian educator. The artfully composed and clearly enunciated order of Dr. Hickson’s thinking is strikingly evident in the writings of his mature years as presented in these two volumes. Not only does he beautifully expound upon a topic, but he gently coaxes the reader to make further considerations of his own on the topic presented. In other words, he stimulates the thinking process in his audience and he arouses the desire of the intellect for deeper and more fruitful contemplation. Surely, the achievement of that objective is one of the many goals of sound education.
These essays are not the work of a superficial man. They are challenging, and were meant to be so. In his essay “The Contribution of Catholic Letters to the Conversion of Our Country” you will find the following paragraph:
G. K. Chesterton, who was himself a Catholic Man of Letters, memorably said, moreover, that “the test of all happiness is gratitude” and “your world would be a lot larger, if you were smaller in it.” And, with the help of such Catholic Letters and Literature, we may also help to
make that world larger for others, unto their more abundant life, both here and in Beatitude.
That paragraph could easily serve as the Introit to all of Dr. Hickson’s literary efforts. And so it is with a constantly enlarging sense of gratitude that we offer to our loyal followers these two volumes in hope that you too will appreciate this twentieth century Catholic American soldier’s literary legacy.

Father Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp., - 100 pages - EBOOK - PDF, Kindle, & EPUB

   The art of money manipulation is similar to the art of manipulating the number of inches in a foot or ounces in a pound or days in a week. Those who can do it are in control of the lives and fortunes of those who cannot. Since peace within societies and between nations must be founded upon justice, it stands to reason that there cannot be any justice or peace in a world where the manipulators of money control the economic order to their own advantage. The Christian social order of the nation inevitably breaks down.

    The money question is very much on the mind of the American people today. Only the Catholic Church has the answers that we seek. Father Fahey is among the best expositors of the social Kingship of Christ and the economic principles of a Christian social order

Father James Wathen, OSJ - 40 Pages - EBOOK - PDF

The Scriptures are an inexhaustible treasure-trove of revelation,
mystery, and wisdom; and the people need the fruits of scholarly
learning and research. But, mainly, the scholar’s work is on "fine
points," facets and minutiae which few can begin to appreciate.
Rather, this is to encourage everyone to resort to the Scriptures as
the ideal book of devotion, instruction, and moral guidance
which it was meant to be.

Hilaire Belloc - 302 Pages - EBOOK - PDF

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc, 1870-1953, was born in France of a French Catholic father and an English protestant mother. His mother later converted under the influence of Cardinal Manning, a good friend and mentor of Hilaire.  Belloc is easily one of the most well-known Catholic writers and apologists of the 20th century.
    This book, published in 1923 after Belloc spent some time in the United States (his wife was American), is a bit reminiscent of Alexis deTocqueville’s work Democracy in America, published in 1835 after his own extensive travels in America. What is surprisingly different in their conclusions about the American political spirit is that Belloc saw more of a monarchical principle at work here than deToqueville did.
    The Contrast represents Belloc’s mature considerations of the important and critical contrast between England (and by extension, the rest of Western Europe which Belloc considers to be much closer in spirit and temper to England than to America) and that new, and to him foreign, thing that he encountered in his time here. The different topical areas that he discusses and contrasts are the physical (geographical), social, military, religious, literary, and linguistic. This is a fascinating analysis from the pen of a great Catholic man who was also a deeply provocative political thinker.

Volume Two: The Church and the World the Church Created - EBOOK - PDF

Msgr. Philip Hughes - PB - 500 pages

 The first volume, then treats of the Church in the West up to the conversion of Constantine (312) but in the East up to Justinian I—or rather a century and a half beyond to allow for the consummation of the disunion that followed Chalcedon. This second volume carries the history through to the time of St. Thomas Aquinas, while the third volume takes the story from Aquinas to Martin Luther.

Volume One: The Church and the World in which the Church was Founded
Volume Two: The Church and the World the Church Created
Volume Three: The Church and the Revolt against it of the Church-created World

By Fr. Leo J. Kinsella - EBOOK - Kindle, & EPUB             

168 pages
Happiness does not just happen . . . It must be earned!   Here is a marriage blueprint that every man can follow.
Great marriages do not just happen, they are made. It takes three parties to make a good marriage: the husband, the wife, and the Lord. This book is concerned with helping the man to become ‘the man for her’. Father Kinsella had already published his famous and successful book The Wife Desired, which is also available from Loreto Publications, in 1952. The first book of advice for women was so successful that the demand for a book of marital advice for men forced Father to write this one in addition. He sat for many years on a diocesan separation court and had also successfully counseled many unhappy couples during his years in the priesthood. Both books sold over a quarter of a million copies shortly after their publication and were read by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. They are practical manuals for how to improve your chances for a happy and successful marriage.
When this book was first published in 1957, one in four marriages in the USA ended in divorce. Today, half of all first marriages end in divorce, and a much higher percentage of second and third marriages find the same end. This means that the majority of Americans are unsuccessful at the most important enterprise of their life, and it follows that the resultant destruction of the happiness, mental stability, and moral character of the majority of the people is the greatest problem that we face as a nation.
Of course, the dangers to the salvation and earthly happiness of these people, and to the unfortunate children born of such unions, is where the cold statistical facts become more personal and of immediate concern to each of us. The divorce rates also do not speak to the issue of those many couples who do not divorce, but who nonetheless are not living in what could be termed deeply happy and fruitful marriages. Being a party to an unhappy marriage is one of the most difficult (yet largely avoidable) situations that anyone can endure in life.

ORDER NOW FOR SHIPMENT NOVEMBER 20

Rev. Alban Butler's ORIGINAL Lives of the Saints Vol. 7

December plus Appendices etc. - Ebook - Illustrated -632 pages

Very few published works require such a lengthy explanation of exactly WHICH edition is being offered, in what format, and why, than Fr. Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints. The reason is that there are so many very different books being printed under this author’s name and under this title due to it’s long history (the work is almost 300 years old) and its universal popularity. Few catholic books except the Bible, the Confessions, the Imitation, and the Summa, are as widely read. This book has also been extensively revised, altered, and updated since its original publication, with new editions, even 21st century revisions being made, that we feel the time is ripe for an original, unexpurgated, and unrevised print version to be made available.
This edition is widely considered to be the most complete and authoritative ever issued. It is the 1854 edition of D. J. Sadlier of New York, and in the Preface it gives its “pedigree.” The original was printed anonymously in London in 1759, after 30 years work on the project. The edition published by Sadlier is an exact replica of the Dublin and London edition of 1833. Being a scholarly work, but also a work deeply imbued with the piety and devotion of a priest’s lifetime effort, it is loaded with footnotes which comprise a significant proportion of the total text. In the original book, the footnotes were printed in such a small, closely-set typeface, that they were almost unreadable.
Loreto Publications has utilized the recent development of OCR scanning to extract the original text and to put it into a modern, highly readable, and much larger font typeface than any of the old editions. We have extensively proofread the text thus generated, and have made the layout “user friendly” as the moderns so succinctly state. In addition, our already available edition of Butler’s Little Pictorial Lives—which is a drastic abridgment of this original edition to one volume, illustrated, with one saint and one image for each day of the year—has provided us with 365 beautiful 19th century engravings which we have added to this original un-illustrated text.
Loreto has made a few corrections of obvious typographical errors and has slightly altered some capitalization rubrics and some spellings, but we have has refrained from alterations to the text. We think that modern readers are not so uneducated as to need the work “updated” for them, either as to content or style, since the beautiful expressiveness of Butler’s 18th century grammatical and rhetorical mastery is not so far removed historically as to render it unintelligible to any ordinary 21st century reader. We are certain that our readers will appreciate the original work for its piety, beauty, and comprehensive scholarship.

Book One - Volume 1 - God: His Knowability, Essence, and Attributes - 480 pages - EBOOK - PDF

Many Catholics living today can remember when priests were well trained in theology and could express the Faith properly in their sermons and in their writing. That is because they were given sound teaching at the seminary in Logic, Philosophy, and Dogmatic Theology from textbooks such as this 12 volume set. The famous Pohle-Preuss manual was used in many seminaries in America and other countries prior to the 1950's when seminary training began to go downhill.

This particular manual was used in the Jesuit seminary where Fr. Leonard Feeney, who was one called by his Jesuit superior "the greatest theologian we have in America...by far" was trained. This beautiful hardbound series is an exact reproduction of the edition originally published in 1911, and it was written by  Rt. Rev. Msgr. Joseph Pohle an edited by Arthur Preuss.

Joseph Pohle was a Jesuit and one of the founding faculty members of the Catholic University of America as well as a frequent contributor to the Catholic Encyclopedia. He died in 1922 after having produced one of the clearest and most succinct and useful systematic studies of Catholic theology ever published. This series is invaluable for priests, seminarians, and anyone interested in a systematic study of dogmatic theology.

Pio Nono:A Study in European Politics and Religion in the Nineteenth Century

by E. E. Y. Hales  - 378 pages - EBOOK - PDF, Kindle, & EPUB

At the time of his death in 1878 Pope Pius IX had served as pope longer than any pope besides Saint Peter. His papacy, from 1846 until 1878, was the political and religious pivot-point of the nineteenth century.
He was elected pope as the candidate of the politically “liberal” party in the College of Cardinals. By liberal here we mean those who were sympathetic generally towards the new republican and anti-monarchical leanings of so many leaders and thinkers in those post-enlightenment years; but the violent revolutions of 1848 convinced him that the liberals had far more than merely political ends in mind. In fact, he now believed that the destruction of the Church was their ultimate goal, and for many of the leaders, it was. Because of that, he became, although not by his choice, a political as well as a religious warrior.
Because the position that Pio Nono inherited as Pope was that not only of the universal shepherd of the faithful and vicar of Christ, but also that of a temporal Prince and sovereign, the task of leadership before him was inextricably intertwined with political and revolutionary affairs. The great battles of church and state that dominated that century were, by the grace of God, his to fight. Mr. Hales beautifully and faithfully tells us the story of that battle and Blessed Pio Nono’s part in it.